Fig. 2: Confirmed COVID-19 cases vs. estimated SARS-CoV-2 infections.

In each US state, confirmed COVID-19 case counts ranged from 0.4 to 12.2 per 1000, while estimated total infections ranged from 3.0 to 63.0 per 1000. a Gray bars indicate the median of sampled distribution of estimated infections from probabilistic bias analysis. b Ratio between estimated infections versus confirmed cases, with reveals underestimation of total SARS-CoV-2 infection burden according to our model. In (b), ratios in each state are colored by quintile in descending order, with the darkest shade of blue indicating the largest quintile, and the lightest shade of green indicating the lowest quintile. Analyses include cumulative confirmed COVID-19 case counts up to April 18, 2020. Estimated SARS-CoV-2 infections were from a Bayesian probabilistic bias analysis to correct for incomplete testing and imperfect test accuracy. Estimated infections include both symptomatic and asymptomatic infections. Horizontal black lines indicate the simulation interval for estimated infections (2.5th and 97.5th percentiles of the distribution of estimated infections for each state) which were computed via 10⁴ Monte Carlo samples from the distribution of estimated SARS-CoV-2 infections in each state. Quality of daily estimates of the number of tests performed varied by state; see Supplementary Table 3 for details. See interactive plot at https://covid19epi.github.io/stats/.